InterBase Roadmap July 2014

Disclaimer: The information included in this roadmap does not constitute, and should not be construed as, a promise or commitment by Embarcadero to develop, market or deliver any particular product, feature or function. The timing and content of Embarcadero’s future product releases could differ materially from the expectations discussed here. Embarcadero reserves the right to change its product plans or roadmap at any time.

Features and Technologies Delivered in InterBase XE3

During 2013, the primary goal of the InterBase team was to deliver the InterBase XE3 engine to the new platforms being targeted by the RAD Studio team to support true multi-platform, write once run anywhere capabilities. With the launch of RAD Studio XE4 (iOS) and XE5 (Android) the InterBase team delivered the InterBase XE3 engine to the new platforms through scheduled updates.

As the new platforms where delivered as part of scheduled updates to the InterBase engine, the team also achieved delivering backwardly compatible binary files support between the new platforms and the existing supported XE3 ones, thus enabling easy migration to the new platforms of existing databases. In addition to the mobile platforms, Linux has also been added to the XE3 engine moving up from InterBase XE.

2013 also saw the launch of IBLite, a run time royalty free version of the InterBase XE3 engine, powered by the InterBase ToGo binaries providing an embedded database engine for mobile with the ability to upgrade to InterBase ToGo seamlessly and without re-deployment.

As InterBase has been enabled onto new platforms that realistically process larger volumes of licenses there has also been improvements to the ISV/VAR program to support developers / ISV.

As part of the updated VAR program, InterBase now has an SDK pack for developers with enhanced testing licenses providing full silent install (that work in conjunction with the call home reporting) to provide easy to access deployment information via an online portal. The greatly reduces the requirements for a VAR to use InterBase. http://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase/var-program

Features and Technologies Expected in 2014

The theme for 2014 is around expanding the usability of InterBase around data movement.

As IBLite has also proved very popular on Android and iOS, following a number of requests, the InterBase team has worked to deliver the embedded IBLite version for Windows and Mac OS X for XE3. (Keep an eye out for that soon).

IBLite will then be able to move a database between platforms seamlessly using the core of the InterBase engine for FREE!

While the easy movement of data files between platforms is one thing, the InterBase team is also working to develop easier tracking of changes to enable the developer to locate changes that have happened in their data; more on this exciting enhancement to follow.

This is a summary of the other features the InterBase team is working on for 2014:

Linux 64bit support

Enhanced default character set management for new databases.

Larger transaction ID support enabling databases to run even longer between back-up and restore.

Developer managed inbuilt tracking of modified data for the purposes of modern replication / synchronization requirements.

Faster database dumps

Embeddable client driver

Updated demo SVN using new database technologies in RAD Studio.

Documentation moved to searchable DocWiki

Features and Technologies Expected after 2014

Beyond 2014 there are a number of key features the team is looking to evaluate in addition to the current targeted features, including: